[RandomBacon]

The title reminds me when someone reported that it was just as easy to get fully-automatic firearms and other military gear from homeland security for free by pretending to be a police department (fake website) and a simple form.

[chatmasta]

An alarming amount of societal functionality depends on what effectively amounts to the honor system. This is especially true when it comes to any sort of gatekept specialty profession, like coroners for example.

There was a great talk at DefCon about faking death: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs

[corporate_shi11]

This is an incredibly important comment. You cannot legislate loyalty to the country. You cannot legislate morality. You cannot legislate most of what makes a country a hospitable place to make a life.

Culture matters more than anything else.

[cortesoft]

I don't know if that is a solvable problem. Society is trust, and it always takes trusting someone to make any system work.

People try to build trust-less systems all the time (like blockchains) but always run up against someplace where trust is required.

[oefrha]

Trust, but verify. In the TFA case at least, it shouldn’t be that hard to call the office’s number (not the filled out Google Voice number of course, but there has to be a number published by/available through reliable parties) and confirm “is it really your office who’s registering the domain”? if (printed on official letterhead) { return authorized; } is beyond stupid.

[cortesoft]

Right, but then you are trusting that number list... how is that generated? Can I call someone up and get that number changed?

[microcolonel]

There are other more straightforward ways to illegally purchase post-hughes machine guns. This is an extremely high risk scheme.

[npo9]

Yeah but

A) military gear is more than automatic weapons. Sometimes they send out things harder to come by than guns to police departments.

B) This scheme costs less than pennies on the dollar.

[catalogia]

This scheme only makes economic sense if you neglect to factor in the cost of being sent to federal prison for many years.

[manigandham]

Isn't that part of the cost with all the schemes?

[catalogia]

Some schemes create paper trails in federal agencies, others do not. In America you can acquire rifles without filling out any paperwork at all, let alone lying to a federal agency on paper. Converting those rifles to automatics can, again, be done without lying on any paperwork in a variety of ways (some more effective than others.) Somebody up to no good would be better served by low-profile acquisition schemes that fly under the radar of regulators, rather than getting their attention then trying to actively deceive them.

All schemes may be risky, but they're not all equally risky. Some schemes are more risky than others. However all of these schemes probably have negative expected payouts if you factor in the FBI being pretty damn good at their jobs. Whatever crime you hypothetically plan on committing with automatic rifles will almost certainly not have a positive payoff when you include the cost of getting busted, and you almost certainly will eventually get busted. When smart people decide to be criminals, they choose white collar crime (arrest rates are very low, and sentencing for those captured is frequently lax.) Violent crime is for idiots who fail to rationally consider the likely consequences of their actions.

[manigandham]

Sure, but the point is that federal prison is always a factor in illegal arms, regardless of how you acquire them.

With modern machining and 3D printing, "ghost" guns can just be manufactured from scratch. There are even companies that sell legal components, blueprints and raw material meant to be easily tweaked and machined into a complete weapon.

[microcolonel]

Yeah, but anyone with access to a machine shop can make good machine guns, it is very easy. This is one of the lower risk approaches.

[girvo]

Though that's still a risk even if you're getting them on the black market, or manufacturing modifications for legally bought AR-15s et al. yourself

[jki275]

You don't even need to purchase them. Anyone with a drill press can make them with impunity.

[darksaints]

Not impunity. You have to be a class 7 manufacturer, which is pretty well regulated.

[jki275]

The context was illegal manufacturing, not legal. Obviously one must as you say get a SOT license in order to do things legally.